


The Thrill of Your Hand

by Sasskarian



Series: Wasteland, Baby (I’m in Love With You) [3]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Budding Love, Caretaking, F/M, First Kiss, Hurt/Comfort, Sick Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:47:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26125987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sasskarian/pseuds/Sasskarian
Summary: Slow, so slow and tentative, he brushes through the coppery hair spread across his lap. Danse can’t remember the last time— if ever— he’s touched someone without his gloves, and the silky slide of her curls through his fingers rocks him down to his bones.And that's when he knows he’s in trouble.
Relationships: Paladin Danse & Female Sole Survivor, Paladin Danse/Sole Survivor (Fallout)
Series: Wasteland, Baby (I’m in Love With You) [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1894897
Comments: 12
Kudos: 33





	The Thrill of Your Hand

Danse has been a soldier too long to be a deep sleeper. 

That’s the first thing the Brotherhood trains you out of. The indoctrination comes later, because only a good soldier can be indoctrinated, and a good soldier has to wake up at the first hint of danger. So when he hears the first whimper from across the room, his eyes snap open. The night is quiet, except for Evelyn’s breathing. But even as he watches in the dim moonlight of the gutted building they’re squatting in for the night, her arm spasms— and the dog bellies up to her, nosing at her with a low whine. 

Now that he’s awake, he can hear the uneven, ragged edge to her breath in place of the normal steady and slow he’s used to. Switching on his low-light red headlamp, he makes his way over to her bedroll. Dogmeat looks up at him, snuffling at the quick pat Danse gives him. The closer he gets to Evelyn, the more alarm fills him until he’s kneeling next to her and trying to stay calm. Sweat beads on her forehead, rolling down her damp skin in rivulets he might find aesthetic under literally any other circumstances. In the places it’s already hit her flight suit, dark patches lay like lightless pools against her chest. 

Even as he watches, she convulses once, twice, and then a third time before falling so still, Danse checks to make sure she’s still breathing. Every good field medic has scanners built into their suits but Evelyn has something better. He tilts her Pip-Boy, fumbling with the tiny controls until, in frustration, he shucks off the heavy gauntlets and gloves of his power armor. She teases him about all but living in it, and his gut clenches as he convinces the Pip to show her vitals. He taps it, wondering for a moment if it’s malfunctioning, but the high pulse rate and low oxygen levels stay exactly the same. 

_Injury detected_ , it reads. _Deploy stimpak?_

Injury? His eyes sweep over her, pinning on a darker spot than the rest and rolls down the collar of her suit, hissing. Imprinted on freckled flesh is an almost perfect set of bite marks, flaming red and hot to the touch. Danse tries, desperately, to remember when she could have been bitten. Was it the fight near the old bookstore? Or down outside of Goodneighbor? In his memory, he hears the _clang_ of armor hitting the ground, and a pained _goddammit_! But when he’d looked, Evelyn had been reattaching her pauldron, a smoking mutant hound at her feet. 

_I’m fine_ , she’d reassured, reloading her gun— the one _he’d_ given her, some absurdly pleased part of him noted— before heading out. It’s a lie he should have known, recognized, after telling it so much himself.

How long had she been out of her armor? How long did radiation last after a radstorm? Danse searches his brain for answers but none came. Lists of symptoms, survival chances, those things dance in his brain, but the best he can do is shrug out of his own armor (that she wasn’t coherent enough to tease him about it _stung_ ) and sit on the side of her bed. 

“Come on, Evelyn,” he murmurs. Shaking hands pry out a bottle of purified water and a cloth from their supply pack, trying to clean the bite of dried blood. As he puts gentle pressure on the wound, dribbles of pus and debris come away on the rag and he rips it in half, trying to prevent contamination as he cleans her, holding on to his forced calm by the tips of his fingers. 

Danse’s scores in field medicine had been average across the board, but with his team more versed in it, those skills are rusty and fuck, he wants to kick himself for it. 

“RadAway,” he tells himself, searching the field kit. Attaching the IV to the bag is easier than finding a place to hang it; he settles on taping it to the hip-brace of his armor with the medical tape Evelyn had insisted on. Finding a vein is harder. He bit his lip as he presses on her arm, thumps it with his fingers, curls her hand into a fist. Nothing seems to work until finally, the smallest hint of blue in the dawning light shows in the back of her hand. 

Evelyn jumps and moans as he swabs the area with the cleaner side of the damp cloth and slides the needle in, her eyes fluttering. The first signs of the medicine helping come around eleven that morning, her crumpled features smoothing out a little. It’s subtle, but Danse can tell; he’s spent the entire night cataloging her every exhale and movement. Dogmeat has somehow ended up half curled on his lap, half draped over his mistress, his heavy rump giving a tentative wag when Evelyn’s breathing begins to even. 

The last of the RadAway drips from the bag, traveling down the long, thin tube to her arm, and Danse slides the IV from her with relief. Next is hydration: a stimpak will have to wait, since he isn’t sure what the mixed medications might do. But as he shifts, leaning over her to drip lukewarm water into her mouth, her hand shoots out and grabs his. 

“Nate?” Her voice cracks, ragged and wet-sounding, and oh, how his heart clenches. “I’m so cold, Nate.” 

He— what does he do here? Dozens of suggestions zip through him, at least half fueled by the heat of her hand on his. “It’s okay,” he finally manages. “You’re a bit sick. Just rest.” 

“Mm.” She curls into him, her cheek nuzzling against his thigh. Danse stares, frozen, disbelieving. “Stay? I’ve been having the worst dream.”

There’s only one answer to that, and his voice is soft, almost wondering, even as the soldier the Brotherhood raised to need nothing beyond himself quails and shivers in his cage of steel. “Of course,” he whispers. Slow, so slow and tentative, he brushes through the coppery hair spread across his lap. Danse can’t remember the last time— if ever— he’s touched someone without his gloves, and the silky slide of her curls through his fingers rocks him down to his bones. 

And that's when he knows he’s in trouble. This— the soft afternoon, with wasteland birds warbling and the touch of her hand on his— is boggy ground. He is her Paladin, her commanding officer. She is his soldier, but… she’s also a friend. In this, though, the way she rests against him, warm and shivering and somehow more real than anything else he’s felt before, Danse is knee-deep in emotion and sinking fast. 

It’s past midnight before her fever breaks. Danse has long since given up on propriety, stretched out on his side next to the bedroll to help keep her warm. Dogmeat drapes over both their feet, snoring softly in the night, and the only stretch of time measured is in the small beep the Pip gives for the alarm he set. Slowly, so he doesn’t disturb Evelyn, he reaches into his pocket for the stimpak syringe and eases it into her injured shoulder. She tenses in his arms, burrowing her face deeper into his chest, but doesn’t wake. 

(It shouldn’t feel good, right? Is he a selfish old bastard, for enjoying this simple human contact?)

Still moving slow, he nudges Dogmeat into waking. “Your turn, boy,” he says, almost soundless. The dog is smarter than most humans Danse knows, though, and he trusts him to stand watch and wake him if something goes wrong. But they’ve picked their camp well, so he doesn’t expect much trouble: Ferals were cleared long ago in another patrol, and there’ve been no signs of mutants for at least a mile. So for a moment, a desperately needed moment after almost two days of trying to keep Evelyn breathing, Danse lets his eyes droop. 

Sleep has almost claimed him when she stirs, breathing her husband’s name against his neck. Guilt lazily slides through him, that her delirium has slapped a dead man’s face over his own in her mind and he hasn’t corrected her, but shock freezes him solid when her lips brush his. Once, soft and sleepy, and then again, more firm; not quite a demand, but when her hands slide to his jaw, he knows he is _definitely_ awake and not hallucinating from exhaustion. He pries her hands from his jaw, ignoring her quiet whine, and settles them between his chest and hers, shuddering when her fingers curl into his undersuit.

“Missed you,” she mumbles against his mouth, her breath a thousand soft pleas against his skin. 

“You’re still sick,” Danse says, summoning the words from somewhere deep inside, a place where willpower reigns over guilt and loneliness. “Rest now, Evie.” 

When she finally settles against him, her ankle resting trustingly between his and her hair tickling his nose, Danse squeezes his eyes shut against the prickling that is most definitely not tears. Paladins don’t cry, and especially not over lovers they can’t have. Loving Evelyn would be a betrayal of her trust, of his military discipline, and disrespecting the memory of her husband. (Wouldn’t it?)

But a smaller, sly part of him knows that he’ll tuck this memory in the depths of his heart: the way she feels, the heavy, reassuring warmth of her body against his. How she fits in his arms, and the silken, forbidden glint of sunlight on her curls. How soft her lips are, even in this dried out desert of horrors.

He’s not in love. He’s _not_. 

But his final thought, before finally dropping into sleep, is a faint wish that maybe he could be, if he let himself.


End file.
